Because the Night

A red fox patrolling his London territory at night

Photo by Jamie Hall

It's believed that in order to avoid being devoured by dinosaurs, many ancient mammals became nocturnal. And it seems that in order to avoid equally unfortunate contact with humans, many modern creatures are again instinctively retreating into the night.

Having no more space in which to run and hide, there's little else they can do other than effect a temporal shift and seek the cover of darkness, thereby minimising contact with man. However, I fear this rather desperate measure will only further marginalise them and is a strategy that fails to guarantee their survival. For unlike man, dinosaurs didn't use electricity or dream of a 24/7 lifestyle.

Thus, despite the remaining pockets of darkness and the stillness of the moon, one can't help but be aware like Oliver Mellors of the incessant noise of man even in the middle of the night, including the diabolical sound of traffic. And aware also of the bright rows of lights everywhere, twinkling with a sort of brilliant malevolence:

"He went down again into the darkness and seclusion of the wood. But he knew that the seclusion of the wood was illusory. The industrial noises broke the solitude, the sharp lights, though unseen, mocked it. A man could no longer be private and withdrawn."

And nor, alas, can any other creature in a world of mechanized evil "ready to destroy whatever did not conform" and ensure that all vulnerable things "perish under the rolling and running of iron".

Notes

Kaitlyn M. Gaynor et al, 'The influence of human disturbance on wildlife nocturnality', Science, Vol. 360, Issue 6394 (15 June 2018), pp. 1232-35.

According to the above paper, mammals across the globe are becoming increasingly nocturnal in order to avoid contact with humans - even if, in some cases, this increases their vulnerability to night hunters. This retreat into the darkness is also a retreat into the past; for previous work has found that many mammals originally abandoned a nocturnal existence for a daytime lifestyle roughly 65.8 million years ago (i.e., 200,000 years after the extinction of the dinosaurs).       

The researchers compiled data from 76 separate studies of 62 species from around the world, including elephants, tigers, and coyotes. No mammal, it seems, apart from domesticated pets, wants anything to do with man; the mad animal, the laughing animal, the crying animal, the unhappy animal.

D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1983), Ch. 10.

On the Whistling of Birds at Midnight

Image taken from Cathy Fisher's blog: Diary of an Account Manager

It's 'round midnight: but I can't sleep.

The robin who seems to live in my mother's back garden is singing still and, of all the sounds in the world, I love best the whistling of birds; more than whale song and more than even the most accomplished human voice. 

Thus, when there's a robin still filling the air with his silvery sound of defiance and affirmation, I'll always lend an ear to listen, whatever the hour. As Lawrence says, the song just bubbles through them, as if they were little fountain-heads of vitality and new creation.

But the question arises as to why the city-living robins have taken to nighttime singing; they are not naturally nocturnal birds, like nightingales, even if they like to sing well into the evening as the sun sets. 

The experts seem undecided. They used to think it was due to the increase in noise during the day - that the birds literally couldn't hear themselves think (or in this case sing) above the roar of traffic. But now the consensus seems to be that the real problem is light pollution; that it's no longer dark enough for our feathered friends to know when night has fallen and it's time to shut the fuck up and go to sleep. 

Either way, it can't be much fun being an urban robin; trapped in a perpetual electric twilight and forced to endure a constant hubbub during the day. Their numbers, unlike other species of once common garden birds, may not (so far) be declining, but they must be constantly exhausted, poor things.

How long will it be, I wonder, before something of this fatigue creeps into their song?

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Whistling of Birds', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 19-24.